I WAS A HOTEL MAID WHO DROPPED A SILVER TRAY AFTER A BILLIONAIRE THREATENED MY SICK SISTER—THEN CHICAGO’S MOST FEARED MAFIA KING STOOD UP AND SAID, “WHAT DID YOU SAY TO HER?”

"Touch that bear or that child," Roman said softly as the cold steel muzzle of his suppressed Heckler & Koch pressed directly against the back of the woman’s skull, "and the pediatric surgeons down the hall won't have enough left of you to practice on."

The woman in the trench coat froze instantly, her fingers half an inch from the brown corduroy bear, dropping the medical shears onto the linoleum with a sharp clatter.

"Tessa!" ten-year-old Chloe whimpered from the hospital bed, her pale little face lighting up with relief beneath her nasal oxygen cannula as Tessa rushed past Roman and wrapped her uninjured left arm gently around her sister’s shoulders.

"I'm right here, bug," Tessa whispered fiercely, kissing the top of Chloe’s soft brown hair while checking the digital readout on the cardiac infusion pump to make sure the line hadn't been interrupted. "You’re safe. Nobody’s taking you anywhere."

Chloe looked past Tessa’s shoulder with wide, solemn ten-year-old eyes at the tall, lethal-looking man in the charcoal suit who was currently holding a gun to the fake social worker’s head while Matteo zip-tied the woman’s wrists behind her back.

"Are you the police?" Chloe asked Roman in a tiny voice.

Instantly, before the child could see the weapon, Roman smoothly slid the suppressed pistol back beneath his suit jacket, his harsh, terrifying features softening in a way that made Tessa’s breath catch.

"Something like that, Chloe," Roman said, his deep voice surprisingly gentle as he looked down at the little girl. "I’m your sister’s boss. And my men outside in the hallway are going to make sure nobody bothers you for the rest of the week."

Matteo dragged the cuffed woman out into the corridor where the other two unconscious thugs were already being loaded onto rolling laundry carts by Roman’s cleanup crew to be taken down to the basement boiler room for questioning.

Before leaving the room, Matteo tossed the woman’s fake DCFS credentials and a burner phone onto the bedside table.

"She doesn't work for the state, Boss," Matteo reported grimly from the doorway. "She’s a private fixer out of Milwaukee. And look at the last text on her burner—it didn't come from Arthur Sterling’s phone."

Roman picked up the burner phone and glanced at the screen. His dark eyebrows drew together into a sharp frown.

"Wait," Tessa whispered, gently sliding the worn brown corduroy teddy bear out from under Chloe’s arm while the nurse came back in to adjust Chloe’s pillows and give her a mild sedative to calm her heart rate down. "Look at the seam on the back of Barnaby’s neck."

Tessa carried the bear over to the corner counter beneath the recessed light.

Using a pair of suture scissors from the nursing tray, she carefully snipped three heavy black carpet threads that her father had sewn into the back of the bear’s neck the night before he died.

She reached inside the polyester batting and pulled out not a notebook—it was too small for a notebook—but a heavy, matte-black titanium thumb drive wrapped inside a folded, handwritten page torn from her father’s yellow engineering pad, dated three months ago!

Tessa unfolded the yellow page with her uninjured hand while Roman stood directly behind her shoulder, reading the cramped, desperate block handwriting of Frank Cole:

Tessa — If anything happens to me this week, DO NOT go to the Chicago Police or the Mayor’s Office. Today when I went down into the sub-basement caisson shafts of the Wacker Drive tower to inspect the concrete cracks, I didn't find cheap cement. I found three sealed stainless-steel drums encased inside the newly poured central foundation pier—alongside a dead surveyor who saw them pouring it on Sunday night. On this drive is the ground-penetrating radar scan of Pier 4 and the license plate of the car that oversaw the pour.

Tessa’s hand started to shake again as she read the final two lines at the bottom of her father’s note:

Arthur Sterling wasn't the one standing at the pit on Sunday night. It was Alderman Victor Vance—Roman Vane’s own cousin—and the body inside the concrete pier is the missing federal prosecutor from the 2024 port investigation.

The silence in the corner of the ICU room turned absolute.

Tessa slowly turned her head and looked up at the man standing six inches behind her.

Roman Vane’s own cousin.

For two hours, she had believed Arthur Sterling was the monster hunting her family—and she had just opened her sister’s stuffed bear and handed the only copy of the evidence straight into the hands of the head of the Vane crime family!